HÄNSEL UND GRETEL
Engelbert Humperdinck1854 - 1921
Opera in three ScenesLibretto by Adelheid Wette based on the fairy tale (1810) by Jacob and Wilhelm GrimmFirst performed December 23rd 1893 at the Hoftheater in Weimar
Sung in German with German surtitles
Duration: 2 hours 15 min. with one interval

About the work

Engelbert Humperdinck's Hänsel und Gretel has been one of the best loved operas for the family for more than 100 years. Ade ...

Engelbert Humperdinck's Hänsel und Gretel has been one of the best loved operas for the family for more than 100 years. Adelheid Wette, the composer's sister, wrote a play for her children based on the brother Grimm's fairy tale and asked her brother to set some of the songs to music. The result was a great hit with Wagner enthusiast Humperdinck's family. The first piano version, written in 1890, was followed, three years later, by a full blown opera. Humperdinck could not resist the temptation to try and transform the work, with its catchy melodies and dramatic story, into a two hour long symphonic masterpiece.
In Keith Warner's version the siblings Hänsel and Gretel plough through a wood of memories before they are able to grow up into adults. „Real fairy tales contain, under an apparently simple surface, the deepest layers of our mental state. In Humberdinck's music a simple children song is transformed almost immediately into a psychological study. What remains in the end, burned into the memory, when the siblings have grown up? We set off on a fairy tale, but realistic, journey through time, to discover this.“ Keith Warner

Synopsis

Hänsel and Gretel are on their own at home. They are supposed to be working. They are getting hungry, waiting for their mother to ...

Hänsel and Gretel are on their own at home. They are supposed to be working. They are getting hungry, waiting for their mother to make some rice pudding for them with milk from the jug, so start to dance and play to pass the time. Their mother comes home. Her disobedient children make her so cross that she smashes the milk jug and sends them off to collect berries in the woods.
Their father comes home after selling some brooms, with lots to eat. He reproaches his wife when he hears that the children are in the woods. They set off to find them.
Act 2 Evening in the wood. Hänsel and Gretel play and gobble up all the berries they collected. They get frightened when it starts to get dark and they realise they are lost. The Sandman appears and sends them to sleep. The children see angels in a dream. Dawn arrives with the Dew Fairy.
Act 3 Hänsel and Gretel find the witch's house. They begin to eat bits of it. The witch appears, pretending to be friendly; the children don't trust her and are put under a spell. Hänsel is locked up and Gretel must work for the witch. When the witch tells her to check on the oven Gretel pretends to be so stupid that the witch has to show her how to do it – and Gretel pushes her in. The spell over the other lost children is broken. Their parents find them and everyone rejoices.